Featured Reader, January 2015

Poet Christine Richardson, who co-hosts the WGPP readings with her husband Dennis Richardson, introduced the featured reader, Marvin R. Hiemstra, with these words:

We ended our 2014 readings with song; we open 2015 with laughter. Our featured reader, Marvin R. Hiemstra is here to serve up a heaping portion of humor. What else can we expect from a poet whose email address is drollmarv@pleasure.com? Marvin tells the story of receiving a comment from an attendee the morning after a particularly rollicking reading who told him, “to be a poet you need to suffer more.” To which he responds that the depths of suffering and degradation are always with us. But that he chooses not “bog-soggy catharsis” to communicate about the world, rather poetry that expresses “the adventure of being alive.” And Marvin R. Heimstra does this in a myriad of ways: poet, humorist, social commentator, philosopher and entertainer.

In French Kiss Destiny DVD he sets new standards for poetry, expanding beyond simply reciting and publishing. He has wryly observed, “The Victorians so relentlessly glued poetry to the printed page and sat on it.”

Even his 2013 publication, “Poet Wrangler, droll poems” refuses to lie quietly on the page. It has made its way around the world. He even has a fan club in Odessa, Ukraine. and we know they sorely need all the laughter they can get!

While we may not be exactly the perfect audience Marvin imagines in one of his poems: the blue sky and the jellyfish that have read all his books, we certainly fit the bill he hopes for when he writes, “What we really need in the end is one happy audience in warm socks.” That’s Us.